IFB attends meeting between West African and French networks on bioinformatics

From 15 to 17 December 2025, a delegation from the French Institute of Bioinformatics (IFB/ELIXIR-FR), the French Society for Bioinformatics (SFBI) and the University of Montpellier was invited to the launch of the West African Network of Bioinformaticians and System Administrators (RABIAS), organised by the WAVE (Central and West African Virus Epidemiology for Food Security) research centre of excellence and the IRD (Institute of Research for Development).

The RABIAS initiative follows on from the second edition of the International Certificate in Bioinformatics and Genomics (CIBiG) in West Africa and training in the HPC cluster for a group of system administrators from countries in the sub-region. The RABIAS network aims to bring together communities of bioinformaticians, system administrators and users in the West African region in order to promote the pooling of human and material resources and stimulate the development of skills among local research teams.

The meeting brought together key players in sequencing, bioinformatics and system administration of computing resources in West Africa (Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Benin, Nigeria, Togo, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Guinea and Niger), as well as representatives from the African Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ASBCB) and the Pan African Bioinformatics Network (H3ABioNet).

The three days alternated between presentations, feedback sessions and small group workshops to define needs, resources and strategic priorities. The scientific presentations provided an overview of research work in key areas such as human genomics, genomic surveillance of pathogens, plant pathology, antimicrobial resistance, and issues related to the deployment of distributed HPC infrastructures.

To illustrate the complexity of issues related to network development, the invited participants shared their experiences in training, infrastructure and resource sharing (material and human). IFB presented its structure as a federation of regional platforms and French node of the ELIXIR network, the organisation of its national network of digital resources (NNCR), and its continuing education and skills development activities. The University of Montpellier (UM) presented an overview of degree programmes in France, followed by a focus on its Master’s in Bioinformatics, highlighting the contribution of new educational approaches from Montpellier Omics Days and the Bioinformatics Learning Lab. The SFBI presented its organisation and main missions, emphasising its interactions with other players in French bioinformatics and other international bioinformatics networks.

The discussions and workshops identified priorities and actions to be implemented for the development and maturation of the RABIAS network. At the end of the meeting, an inter-institutional and international steering committee was identified and working groups made up of participants committed to implementing the priority actions planned for 2026. This meeting laid the foundations for the network and demonstrated the community’s dynamism and involvement in this initiative. See you at the next edition!